Tag: final reflection

Community Arts Final Reflection

Assignment Description:

Final Reflection – Reflect on your learning objectives.  What did you do to support meeting your objectives?  What specific learning moments assisted you?  What would you do differently?  What do you feel really good about?  Summarize your community statement, case study and final research and discuss how you navigated these projects and what you learned.

Learning Objectives

1. I will delve into all readings and assignments in order to better understand the community arts field.

2. I will establish my position within the community arts field and be able to articulate it.

3. I will use this class to build upon my research, specifically my literature review.

4. I will discover more community arts organizations and add to my list of possible employers.

5. I will participate fully but not dominate the conversation.

Final Reflection

I think I partly achieved all of my learning objectives. I say partly because I ended up veering in a different direction than I originally expected. For instance, while I had intended to use the assignments to specifically build up my literature review, I ended up researching tangential material for my interview and term paper. The interview was related to my research as in it was about digital storytelling, but it looked trauma healing instead of creativity. My term paper was also related because it looked at radio and facilitation styles, but it was not in the digital storytelling field and was focused on youth instead of adults. Thus, while these assignments will provide some information for my research, they are not as directly linked as I had originally intended.

This is not say that I feel what I learned from these assignments is not valuable. I greatly enjoyed interviewing Elaine at the Trauma Healing Project and gained an even greater understanding of the impact of digital storytelling. Furthermore, I was able to use this information to help Trauma Healing write a grant that will hopefully build up their digital storytelling series to be more sustainable. And while the term paper was difficult for me because I had to synthesize so much information, in the end, I am grateful for having done so. I have a much clearer understanding of what I’ve learned over since last year and how it all interconnects. This term paper also further clarified my understanding of the community arts field. I kind of wish we didn’t write (or re-wrote) our community arts statement at the end of class. If I were to do that, I would say that I see myself as a community arts organizer who hopes to use storytelling and dialogue in cultural programming for civic engagement. This realization has come from further research into arts-based civic engagement and my practicum experiences. Thus, by the end of the term I was able meet my second learning objective:  “I will establish my position within the community arts field and be able to articulate it.” And I was able to better clarify what kind of job positions I am interested in and add to my list of possible employers.

The last learning objective is always the hardest for me to accomplish because I like to participate in discussion and have a hard time not doing so. I have often forced myself to share less but then I end up feeling less engaged in the process. Thus, this objective continues to be a struggle for me. While this class definitely did have a better balance of voices, I still feel I could have been less of a dominate voice. This is something I want to work on as a facilitator, both for recognizing how to use my voice but also how to help other use theirs. This is why I’m really excited to take a Conflict Resolution class next term on dialogue across difference. I think this will be a great application of interests in arts-based civic dialogue and a way to work on my own participation. Then I can continue my lessons from this class and eventually accomplish my goal of using dialogue and storytelling for civic engagement in cultural programming!

 

OFN Practicum: Final Reflection

Practicum Learning Objectives:

1) To place arts and culture activities, projects, and communities on the map for Oregon in partnership with OFN

2) To actively engage the RACM platform (PlaceStories.com), gaining hands-on experience with the use of this digital tool and reflecting on the potential it holds for arts and culture work.

3) To assist OFN and its partners in documenting and promoting the variety of artists, programs, and communities it serves across Oregon.

The first point was the main purpose of this practicum. As I explained in my weekly posts and evaluation, the posting process took longer than expected. Maya and I spent a bulk of our time researching artists and building a foundation of information for the next practicum students. Thus, we were only able to post 4 stories all together to the RACM, but they were high quality posts that will serve as good examples for future students. Emily and Riki agreed that it would be better for us to post a small number of quality stories then to rush in posting mediocre stories. This meant that we spent a lot of time editing our postcards and didn’t get to post them till the last 2 weeks. However, these stories represent the OFN and rural artists, so it was important to post our best possible work. Furthermore, I don’t know if it would have been possible to post more based on the time constraints of having to balance multiple people’s schedules. This is why I suggested on my evaluation that the practicum should just be 1-3 students at max in order to insure efficiency.

The 2nd objective connects to the first. As just mentioned, we were not able to really use the RACM platform till the last few weeks of the practicum, however I wrote in my log that the platform was extremely easy to use and very interactive. We have also created practicum guidelines for future students that describes a step by step process on how to post to Placestories.com for the RACM. Hopefully, over time the types of artists and media represented on the RACM will grow. This platform is a great transmedia tool for representing local and national rural artists. I’m excited to see how the map advances.

The last objective was the underlying point of the practicum. Everything we posted on the RACM had to also represent the OFN with the goal of enticing people to learn more about the OFN. This was why we had to edit our postcards to sound more promotional and personal rather than informational and formal. We want these stories to catch people’s attention and direct them to the OFN website. This was an interesting challenge, since I had to figure out how to write a promotional piece based on limited information. However, I think the stories turned out well and will hopefully bring more people to the OFN!

Overall, I really enjoyed working the OFN! Emily was a great supervisor and was very open to us leading the practicum as well as discussing challenges and solutions. It was somewhat difficult to get Riki involved with the project, but I do feel she should edit the postcards before they are posted. Hopefully, the work Maya and I did will be a good foundation for streamlining this practicum in the future.